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Mapping Colonial New England: Looking at the Landscape of New EnglandIntroduction[T]his remote, rocky, barren, bushy, wild-woody wilderness, a receptacle for Lions, Wolves, Bears, Foxes, Rockoones, Bags, Bevers, Otters, and all kind of wild creatures, a place never afforded the Natives better than the flesh of a few wild creatures and parch't Indian corn incht out with Chesnuts and bitter Acorns, now through the mercy of Christ become a second England for ferilness in so short a space that it is indeed the wonder of the world...English migrants created the colony of Massachusetts Bay by constructing local institutions—families, farms, churches and towns. Puritan colonists brought their European political culture with them across the Atlantic, in the form of their cherished political doctrines and even their very own ways of mapping the world. However, native occupants and English migrants had very different ideas about the land and its uses. Two major events framed a long period of political and social development: the Founding of the colony in 1630 and the outbreak of King Philip's War in 1675. In this lesson, students learn to interpret the built environment through text and image. They also study maps as a key way of shaping territory and transmitting cultural knowledge. This lesson explores the landscape of New England as a way of understanding the contrasting ways that the Europeans and Indians understood the land and how to use it. The lesson focuses on William Wood's 1634 and William Hubbard's 1677 maps to trace how the Puritans took possession of the region, built towns, and established families on the land. How did these New England settlers interact with the Native Americans, and how can we gain information about those relationships from primary sources such as maps? Guiding Questions
Learning ObjectivesAfter completing this lesson, students should:
Background Information for the TeacherNew England migrants colonized their region of North America by establishing towns. The Puritans embarked upon their migration with conservative intentions; they sought to preserve their customary way of life and to replicate a local, town-based culture based on English village life. However, they developed an adaptive process of town settlement in order to find their way in a new environment. Settlers quickly dispersed from the first towns. By the fall of 1630 seven separate settlements in Massachusetts Bay Colony ranged from Salem in the North to Dorchester in the south, with Boston, Medford, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Watertown lying between them. With the first generation living to an average age of 70, the population doubled about every 27 years, thus creating the need to settle new land and create new communities. The English looked inland for more land.To the English, the "peopling" of New England meant planting towns and churches in the "vacant land." The English and the Indians held contrasting attitudes on the concept of land ownership; Europeans believed in abstract concepts of legal title while Indians focused on rights based on use. English settlers who took up lands in the Northeast based their claims to the land on "discovery" by explorers and charters granted by the king to colonial corporations that established the actual colonies. Leaders of Massachusetts also argued that Native lands were vacuum domicilium, vacant land waiting to be improved. The land appeared "natural" and unimproved to the English because they had little or no understanding of the ways in which Native peoples manipulated and used their lands. To English eyes Native peoples' seasonal migration about their homelands to fish, farm, and hunt appeared to be no use at all since there were no fixed habitants or fenced fields, or in other words, no evidence of what the English saw as improvement. Only fields planted with crops which bore some resemblance to English land uses appeared to be occupied, but these were the lands that colonial farmers most desired.At first and indeed, for some time, the Native Americans and English Puritans occupied southern New England together; native communities lay in close proximity to Boston as late as the 1670s. But the dramatically different conceptions of land use and ownership along with the swelling numbers of English and their need to develop new sites for new towns brought the two peoples into conflict in New England by the beginning of the fourth quarter of the seventeenth century. Historical texts and historical maps offer a window into both English and Native American views, although the Native words are often transcribed by Englishmen. Background Information Websites for Teachers1. The following materials from EDSITEment-reviewed websites may be useful to teachers seeking advice on using maps.
2. The following materials from EDSITEment resources may be useful to teachers seeking advice about English and Indian settlement in New England in the seventeenth century.
Preparing to Teach this LessonMaterials:Download or bookmark the materials that you plan to use for the activity. If you choose to use the 1677 Map in its interactive form, check your computer for the necessary Quicktime plug-in. Nota Bene: Many of these links and resources are available for classroom group exercises in Student Launch Pads.Also, teachers and students can access all student activities and accompanying websites through the EDSITEment Portfolio Tool. First time teachers will need to register and set up personal accounts and then follow the directions to set up their class. First go to http://chnm.gmu.edu/edsitement/login/. Activity 1:
Activity 2:
Suggested ActivitiesActivity 1. Mapping New EnglandActivity 2. Crisis in the Colonies: King Philip's War, Bacon's Rebellion, and the Pueblo RevoltActivity 1. Mapping New England1. The teacher can model how historians interpret and learn from primary source maps by interpreting the seventeenth-century John Smith map (see EDSITEment lesson on Images of the New World—Activity 2).
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